


Red Boy & Angry Boy

by wheres-mickey (peijou)



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Baby!Ian, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, baby!Mickey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:53:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3897067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peijou/pseuds/wheres-mickey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian and Mickey may have met up briefly in the summer of 2000, at the glorious age of 4 and 6 respectively.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Boy & Angry Boy

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a non-native english speaker who could really use a beta, so warning for that.
> 
> also, i wanted to try something a bit different... hope you'll like it *crossing fingers*

It’s the first summer of the new millennium, and somehow, it seems like the very idea helps forgetting old neighborhood quarrels.

Making the most of the cooler evening air, elders are gathered on their porches. They're playing cards and drinking cheap beer halfheartedly--at least they're not drying alone at home like old beans, they think. Adults too lounge idly in groups, although they tend to prefer the cool of their kitchens, where their half-broken, noisy fan is placed strategically so it gives them the feeling that they aren't going to melt.

In the end, everyone does whatever they can do that doesn’t require much brain to beat the unforgiving summer barbecuing Chicago. People silently agreed to give themselves a break, to give up on work for the remaining time and allow themselves to slug around in each other's company. These peaceful, slow evenings feel like paradise, even in the southside. Only kids are adventurous enough to face the heat, playing in the streets where the sun is slowly setting.

Mickey's not a part of them, though.

A new millennium is not enough for Mickey Milkovich to share the general excitement, and even another thousand years wouldn’t help. He’s only six but he’s already  _so_  done.

Hiding someplace under the tracks of the L, he’s just plain angry.

He’s angry at Iggy for punching him in the face, earlier, for no apparent reason, and he’s angry at himself for his inability to punch his brother back like he deserved it. Iggy’s never going to leave him alone now, Mickey knows it, and he hates it. He’s angry at the dumb sun that melts his bones and flesh. Summertime attraction. He doesn't get that. Summertime's dumb, and dumb hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. Of course he's angry that it's summer.

He’s so angry at everything that he barely registers the long shadow, stretched by the summer sunset, that dances around him.

He minutely stops being angry, though, when he doesn’t feel the warmth of the sun against his back anymore, and notices with horror the dark shape covering his own, suddenly filling him with sheer terror.  _That's it_ , he thinks. His brothers, or, far worse, his father, has found him hiding. He's going to be laughed at all over again, he's going to be called the 'disgrace' to the Milkovich family again. Squeezing his eyes shut, he waits obediently for the shaming to blast at his face.

When nothing happens, Mickey opens his eyes again. The three-apple-high boy with the messy, curly hair and chubby cheeks who leans over his shoulder instead, doesn’t look anything like his father, and doesn't look the slightest bit threatening.

Sitting on his heels in case things got bad and he had to run away, Mickey falls back on his buttock, forming a light cloud of durt around him in the process that makes him even dirtier. And there he is, back at being angry (but also a bit relieved). He sees from the corner of his eye the little boy coming around him, and sitting cross-legged in front of him.

Mickey glances up. He's surprised when he sees the boy’s hair—because yes, that's the first thing he sees. It’s really— It’s  _red_. With the evening golden light, it looks like he has a fire on top of his head. Mickey didn't know it was even possible. It's kind of pretty. He tries his hardest not to let his amazement show and sniffs scornfully. The boy doesn't respond, staring at him instead.

But at length, Mickey can't help and looks up again. He looks at the boy's face. What Mickey had mistaken for dirt and mud when he had his back to the light, he can now identify as freckles. He knows these orange marks are freckles. He knows it because he has some freckles himself, that his dad won't stop making fun of, because he says that those, plus his long, blond eyelashes make him look like a girl.

Mickey doesn't want to look like a girl. He wants to look like his father and older brothers.

Unlike his, though, the boy's freckles are billions. At least. Mickey knows it because he can’t count up to a billion (Iggy makes fun of him because of that too) and he can't count all the marks on the boy's skin. Mickey doesn't think this boy looks like a girl, but he sure does look like one of the stupid characters he sees in the picture books his little sister Mandy brings back home and hides in her room, that she steals from school.

“Don’t be sca'ed. I’m not sca'y,” the boy says when he catches the way Mickey's eyes land back to his feet after his inspection.

Mickey looks up again. He doesn't want to, but he _really_ can't help. It's so bizarre. The boy is wearing a toothy smile, with his little teeth, and some of them, at the front, are missing. Mickey thinks that a boy who has such a high-pitched voice should not be untitled to laugh at him, so he doesn’t acknowledge this red boy, just sits stubbornly with his eyebrows furrowed.

Mickey knows he's much older and taller and cooler than this little red boy anyway.

The boy folds his slim legs against his way too loose t-shirt, loops his freckled arms around them and puts his chin on top of his knees. “I like my mom, but she's sca'y sometimes. Fiona's sca'y too. She doesn't let me stick my head in the wate' for too long in the pool, she pulls my hair. She says it’s for my ' _own good_ '.” He fidgets at the last two words, like he doesn't exactly know the meaning.

Who the heck Fiona is, frack if Mickey knows. He doesn’t ask. He just wants to be left alone, weird freckled boys be damned. He stares back at his feet, making it obvious that he's not going to share anything with him at all.

But the boy doesn’t get the clue. He cocks his head, eyeing Mickey curiously, and asks, like he can’t help himself, “Why you alone? What are you doing?” like it’s not obvious that Mickey is alone because he has no friends, doesn’t want any, and is doing nothing but sitting there, waiting for the fight that has started between his father and mother to die down before he can head back to his bedroom.

But the green eyes can't keep from looking straight into his soul, so he lies, “I’m lost.”

“We can go sea'ch you home! I will he'p you.”

This time, Mickey redirects his gaze, and he laughs meanly at the boy's face. He knows the way back. He just doesn’t want to get there just yet. Besides, there's no way such a little, scrawny boy by his side is going to help him or make any difference in the Milkovich house of horrors.

The boy’s face crumbles instantly. Mickey watches, stunned, the red eyebrows going up and curving upwards in the middle of his forehead, his long lashes blinking a few times and his eyes going wet like he’s going to cry.

Mickey was always taught not to cry, and doesn’t know anything about the feeling attached to these eyebrows. The only eyebrows he ever encounters are either frowned downwards in anger, usually accompanied with a scrunched nose and a mouth opened threateningly, or simple raised judgmentally. He has even tried to learn that last move in the mirror, so as to look more alike with his father and brothers, but he mostly just looked surprised and dumb. He’s angry that he looks so dumb. He looks angry the rest of the time, and he feels pretty angry the largest portion of this time too.

The boy leans his head back and winces, holding back his tears bravely. “You don’t have to be mean,” he mumbles.

Mickey shrugs, and improvises a new lie, just so that Red Boy leaves him alone once for all. “My brothers are coming later. They've a beard and a gun and they will shoot you.”

The threat doesn't work. Red Boy doesn’t care and shifts closer, beaming that they have something in common. “You have b'others?”

Mickey rolls his eyes so hard his head lols back. His main bother is the one who just asked.

“I have one b'other and one sister,” Red Boy explains (with his hands too) despite Mickey’s obvious lack of interest, “they’re busy wit' my mom right now. It happens sometimes. I don’t know what they do with mom, I hope they don’t have fun without me.” Suddenly pensive, or sad, Mickey's not sure, he picks up a stick on the floor and starts scratching the dusty floor with it. Mickey thinks he’s done talking then, but he adds, "you can come to my house.”

“No.”

Mickey's shaking his head, like he doesn't know why he even bothered replying.

“I can ask Fiona! She will say yes. She says no children should be alone in the street. You can be my b'other, then. And maybe my mother will have a baby. Her belly is so big! That will make two b'others. School is going to sta't, too, and I'm going to be alone at home again, because Lip and Fiona go to school. I want to go, but Lip says school is bo'ing. You go to school?”

“No.”

“Really? We can stay at home together when they are in school! I will not be alone. You want to come?”

“No.”

Red Boy looks disappointed. “What’s you name?”

“Iggy,” Mickey lies and hates that his older brother’s name was the first one to pop up in his head.

“Okay, Iggy. I’m Een,” the boy says and his chubby cheeks seem even chubbier because of his wide smile. He smiles all the time. That's so weird. “Iggy sounds like Piggy,” he adds and bursts out laughing.

Because this has got to be one of the purest sounds Mickey has ever heard in his life of a six year-old, he can’t even blame Red Boy for making fun of his brother’s name. Even though Een sounds like a damn stupid name too. Een's giggling fit eventually comes down to a stop and he rubs his eyes with his fists and goes on his knees, crawling towards Mickey, who just sits and watches him as he comes closer.

“What’s this?” Een asks, touching his arm where he has a bruise.

Mickey got that bruise that day when he tripped on the floor. Mickey kinda likes it now because he thinks he looks cool, _dangerous_ with it. He definitely hated it when he rolled all the way down the stairs to the cold tiles, though, or now when his brothers press their fingers repeatedly on it asking if that hurts. It definitely hurts, and he’s angry that it does show on his face.

Een’s touch on him is gentle, though. He’s not pushing his fingers in the flesh, he just linger them there, his big eyes staring at Mickey intently. Mickey yanks his arm away anyway. Een rolls back on his buttlock, arms around his legs like before.

“My cat,” Mickey says, and then he realizes it’s not threatening enough so he adds, “it’s a big cat. Like a lion.”

Een seems impressed enough. He opens a round mouth and fidgets from side to side pensively. Finally, he looks up to meet Mickey's eye and stares at him, “I want a lion.”

“There are lions in the zoo,” Mickey says.

“I can't go.”

“Why not?”

“Is too expensive, Fiona says,” Een confesses, and his eyes are a bit teary again.

Mickey picks his own stick on the floor and starts scratching the floor with Een. He went to the zoo once, alone, but his family never brought him there. His mother had been talking about mythical three-legged animals with necks like knots and pink dots and Mickey had gotten curious and wanted to check by himself. He hadn't found the animals she was talking about, but he had found himself captivated by a huge grey animal with enormous ears, until a security guy spotted him alone and got him out of the parc. “Not worth it anyway,” he lies again, and this time he doesn't know why. Maybe he doesn't want Een to be sad over something like that. He doesn't know for sure.

It works, at least, and Een doesn't seem so sad anymore, just curious. He drops his stick to listen to Mickey. “Why?”

“Because you can’t go with the lions.”

“Why?”

“Because they say it’s dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Because they could eat you and kill you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!” Mickey bursts out suddenly, irritated that he gave so many answers, but that the boy remains unsatisfied.

Een seems puzzled. He tilts his head to the side and asks, unsure, “but animals are nice?”

“My mum says my brothers are animals, and so they’re dangerous. But not as dangerous as my dad.”

Een frowns, digesting the information slowly, and resumes scratching the floor with the stick. Mickey thinks he can’t get it anyway.

That's when an older girl appears like she's just materialized herself next to Mickey, running towards Een and getting to the floor next to him. “Ian! What are you doing here,” she exclaims more than he actually asks, clearly worried.

“Fiona! I was playing with Iggy,” he says, like it's most normal thing to do. The girl looks at Mickey, still worried, but seems relieved when she takes him in. Softens, even. Mickey's angry that she's not scared of him, but then, she looks older and he doesn't want to be beaten so he just mutters something under his breath. She redirects her gaze at Een, or Ian, Mickey doesn't know anymore at this point, when the boy suddenly remembers an important question, and asks, unsure, “Lip is a dangerous lion?”

“What? Why?” the girl asks, and Mickey watches the interaction, even though he's confused as to why a lip would be lion, except in the case of a lion's lip, and all of a sudden, he wonders if lions even have lips to begin with. He figures that's the whole point of the question, and finds himself listening attentively to the answer to this primordial question. But Ian tries a different tactic, obviously hopeful. “We can go to the zoo?” he asks.

The girl sighs. “We’ll see.” She gets to Ian's level and hands out a hand for him to take. “Come on, now, Ian. I put mum to bed. Time to eat.”

“Oh, ok,” Ian says, getting on his feet, holding the girl’s hand. “Bye, Iggy!” he hollers, twisting his body despite his sister scolding him, so he can wave at Mickey until he's out of sight.

 

\-----

 

The next evening Mickey hides under the L is nearly just hot as the previous one, and though he hates summer, he’s plain angry, and this spot under the L is the only place he knows where his father won't find him, and where he can be angry in peace.

Red Boy doesn’t show up. Not that Mickey was waiting for him or anything, but it angers him a little. Maybe he should have gone with him, in his house, so that he would never have had to go back to his own house, never have had to face his dad, and his massive hands that beat him all the time, again. Mickey sits there, quietly, scratching the dust with a stick he found nearby, trying to direct his thoughts elsewhere than on the aching bruise those hands have left on his left cheek.

Before he realizes it, he's drawing a lion there, on the dusty floor, and then, he's drawing a pride, and then, stick figures everywhere next to those many animals, all the animals he knows, with big ears and long necks, and doesn't know, with stains and dots and knotted-necks and stripes. He thinks about zoos, red hair, dumb orange face and little freckled hand waving towards him.

After he's covered the whole surface on his spot under the L, he falls back on his butt, and admires his handy work. He's got dust everywhere, even inside his shorts, and it should anger him; but surrounded by his cheery fauna, he finds himself not so angry after all.

**Author's Note:**

> always wanted to write a baby!shameless fic, and that was really fun, but also a bit sad, somehow.  
> of course, feel free to [prompt me](http://wheres-mickey.tumblr.com/ask)!
> 
> kudos/comments are truly appreciated! they make my day. ♥


End file.
